Best Friend Next Door (6 page)

I nod. “This’ll be my last one.”

“You can only read books today,” Mom C says. “And not good ones. Long, boring biographies. Or write letters to Olivia and Lucy. No screen time. No panda cam. Zero fun.”

She’s smiling, but I know she means it. I can’t keep hiding forever.

Once Mom C has left for work and Mom J is in her office, I borrow Mom J’s phone to call Leesa.

“Aunt Julia?” Leesa asks.

“No,” I say. “It’s me. Emme.”

“Hey, cuz!” Leesa shouts. People are laughing in the background. I picture her on the way to breakfast at her boarding school. I try to imagine everyone wearing plaid skirts and carrying books on their hips. “What’s up? Did you get the collage I sent back to you?”

“Yeah,” I say, leaning back on my bed. “I love your peace symbol. Now I’m working on my part.”

“Fab-amazing,” Leesa says. “Rock on, crazy artist.”

The thing I love about Leesa is that she’s a total free spirit. She plays the ukulele and has her ears pierced seven times and she even has this strange way of talking.

“So … whazzup?” Leesa asks.

“I’m having a hard time at school. Don’t tell my moms, okay? It’s just that—”

“Other girls?” Leesa asks. “Or your teacher?”

“Both. Mostly the girls.”

“Clothes? Snotty comments? Making you feel bad about yourself?”

It feels like she’s reading my mind. “All of the above.”

“Welcome to fifth grade. It can be a tough year. Just don’t give them power. And be yourself. Keep up with the good vibes. You’re my rockin’ little cuz.”

I pick at a scab on my knee. I don’t feel very rockin’. And I have no idea what vibes have to do with any of this.

“Listen,” Leesa says, “I’ve got to go. There’s a mad dash on the French toast and I need some. Love you like crazy. Be yourself, okay? Bye!”

“I love you, too,” I say, but she’s already hung up.

I set down the phone and stare out the window. It’s still raining out. I wonder if it’s going to rain forever. I wonder if we’re all going to be sucked into the gloppy mud.

Dumb mud
. I smile weakly. I’ll have to tell that palindrome to Hannah.

Yesterday Hannah said that leaving Sophie’s smiley face on the wall was
so me
. And Leesa said to
be myself
. But here’s the thing: I honestly have no idea what or who I am anymore.

W
hat’s
og
?” Coach Missy asks, standing above Emme and me. She’s swinging a stopwatch from her wrist. She has on one blue flip-flop and one white flip-flop. That’s what our coach does on meet days because those are the colors for all the teams at the YMCA, including the Dolphins.

“Og,”
I explain, “is
go
backward. So if I write
Go Emme Og,
then it’s a palindrome.”

Coach Missy shakes her head. “You guys are too much.”

Emme and I are sitting at the edge of the pool. We’ve just done our freestyle and kick-swim warm-ups and now we’re waiting for the meet to begin. It’s the second meet of the season. Emme’s swimming back and butterfly and I’m swimming two freestyles. We’re also doing the medley relay together. We’re wearing our crazy-tight racing suits, our team caps, and we have goggles dangling around our necks. At the moment Coach Missy finds us, we’re writing on each other with black Sharpies. At swim meets everyone records event information on their arms with a marker. Lots of girls also write
Eat My Bubbles
or
Kick Kick Kick
on their shins. Emme and I decided I’d put
Go Emme Og
on my leg and she’d put
Go Hannah Og
on her leg. Lucky-charm palindromes.

“You’re the Og Twins,” Coach Missy says. “That’s what I’m calling you from now on. I’ve never seen two people who are more alike. Look at your toenails!”

Emme and I tap our toes together. Once I learned that Emme always paints her toenails different colors, I started doing it, too. We currently have rainbow toes, red on the left pinkie all the way to violet on the right pinkie. We did a bunch of extra blue toenails in the middle because the rainbow only has seven colors. Maybe it seems kooky, but it makes sense to us.

“Total Og Twins,” Coach Missy says, walking away.

Emme and I grin at each other. It’s true that we’re basically twins. We have the palindrome thing and the peanut butter thing and we live on the same street and have the same birthday and we both have sandy hair with a slight greenish hue. The only difference, really, is that I’m tall and Emme is tiny. Also, it’s looking like Emme loves ice-skating, which I’m scared of. Not that I’ve told her that. I don’t want her to think I’m a wimp.

“Are you nervous?” I ask Emme.

She shakes her head. “Not really. I just focus on one thing during the race, like kicking. What about you?”

I’m so nervous my teeth are chattering and I’m sitting on my hands to keep from chewing my nails. It doesn’t help that I’m in the first heat. Also, I hate diving off the blocks. I’m always worried I’m going to fall and hit my head. I scan the bleachers. I can’t see my dad and Margo. It was raining hard out, so they dropped us off at the door of the Y and circled for parking. What if they can’t find parking for the whole meet and they miss all my races? I wish they’d get here already.

Emme snaps the lid onto the Sharpie. “Remember,” she says, “it’s just a pool loop. Get it?
Pool loop
.”

“
Pool loop
,” I say, nodding. “Awesome.”

Coach Missy blows her whistle. “Swimmers, take your places on the blocks.”

I fit my goggles in place. They’re way too tight. I’m probably going to get a headache.

“Og,” Emme says to me as she stands up.

“Og,” I say weakly, and then walk over to lane two.

The Dolphins place third in the meet, which is awesome. Even more awesome is that Emme and I both get our personal bests—Emme in the two-hundred back and me in the fifty free. Even more awesome is that our medley relay WON! We were five entire seconds ahead of the Thunderbirds.

After the meet, we all shower and change. All the girls are singing in the locker room and goofing around and celebrating our awesomeness. But then, when we come to the deck for our wrap-up meeting, we fall silent. Coach Missy is crying. She’s holding her phone in one hand and dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

“I just got a text from my sister,” she explains as we gather around her on the bleachers. “She lives in Deer Park. That’s a few hours north, where I grew up. They’ve been getting even worse rain than we have this fall, and the town has flooded. They’re evacuating hundreds of houses as we speak. People might lose everything.”

I stare at Coach Missy. I’ve never seen her this upset. I have no idea what to say.

“Is there anything we can do?” Emme asks. “Like, how can we help?”

I nod along with a bunch of other girls.

Coach Missy shakes her head. “For now,” she says, “just be grateful for what you have. You all did some amazing swimming today. I’m proud of all of you.”

When I come down from the bleachers, my dad and Margo are waiting for me. I give them both hugs. I
am
grateful for my parents and for everything I have. Even if I do my best to ignore the fact that Margo’s belly is pressing against me as she squeezes me tight.

On Monday, Mr. Bryce stands at the front of the rug during morning meeting. He’s wearing his checkerboard tie. He’s smiling and holding a big yellow envelope in each hand. They’re labeled
TEAM A
and
TEAM B
. We definitely have the coolest fifth-grade teacher. Sometimes Mr. Bryce juggles balls while he’s teaching. One sunny morning last week, when we
finally
got a break from the rain, he was doing read-aloud on the rug. He was reading
Holes
. He glanced toward the window and said, “Let’s take this outside.” He ended up reading and walking backward as we strolled from the school to Franklin Street to Southampton Park and back again. I told Emme about it at lunch and she was so jealous. She said Ms. Linhart would never, ever do anything fun like that.

“Who’s ever heard of a fund-raiser?” Mr. Bryce asks. We’ve finished attendance and this is the part of morning meeting where we talk about current events.

I lift my hand.

Mr. Bryce nods toward me. “Hannah?”

“It’s where you raise money,” I say. “Like how we have the Earth Ball and the silent auction at Greeley to raise money for the school.”

“Exactly,” Mr. Bryce says. “There are also fund-raisers for specific causes. Who knows some examples of causes?”

I waggle my hand again, but this time he calls on Layla. She’s really nice and she’s always sharing her Jelly Bellys at recess. Layla’s skin is smooth and dark, and she’s the tallest kid, boy or girl, in our grade. Layla and I were together in second grade, but not in third or fourth.

“A cause is something that does good things,” Layla says, twisting one of her braids around her finger, “like animal rights or fighting diseases.”

Mr. Bryce nods as he fires up the Smart Board. We all spring onto our knees for a closer look.

“This is Deer Park,” Mr. Bryce says, scrolling past photos of submerged homes and muddy rivers gushing down streets. “It’s in the Adirondacks. This past weekend, they had to evacuate over one hundred—”

“My swim coach is from there!” I blurt out. “Her sister had to evacuate on Saturday.”

“Exactly, Hannah,” Mr. Bryce says. “Remember to raise your hand next time.”

Everyone gapes at me. It’s not like I’m embarrassed that Mr. Bryce called me out. I mean,
I know someone who knows someone who lives in Deer Park
! How can I hold that in?

“People are losing everything,” Mr. Bryce says. “Kids just like you suddenly don’t have their clothes or beds or—”

“Or iPads,” Denny blurts out.

I make a face at Denny. He has tangled rusty hair and freckles. Annoying through and through.

Marley raises her hand. “How can we help?”

Mr. Bryce grins. “Finally, what I was getting to! I called the local Red Cross. Our class is going to send money to the Deer Park families who lost their homes.”

“But how will we get the money?” Layla asks.